St. Petersburg 1911.
"I have at last decided that my life must remain unsettled, undecided; it is too late to settle it except by sheer will, and that is too stupid. Real ties exist in different centers—one must obey both; it is utterly indifferent to me what external aspect my life takes, because it is also too late."
(She was then 32 years old)
St. Petersburg 1911.
"I hope to be in America at intervals and often. You and Pats are more to me than anything else and I have the greatest love for Poodihaven (Cazenovia), but I cannot associate with outsiders sufficiently to fill my life. I want to beat them all and I don't want to hear them talk."
At this time, I think, she was going through a very difficult period of uncertainty in her life, which is reflected in her letters written at that time:
"If I did not care for Americans and if I did not have a great deal of sentiment and associations, ties and memories in America, it would be so easy to leave it alone and not think about it. But I know I am both. I know how strongly attached I am to both sides and I only deplore the difference among people in the world. But when I think of even those others that I care for, I know that we are strangers. My heart does not beat with any puritanical sentiment—so there. If I am attracted to some puritanical offspring—some representative of the progressing (?) new world, it is like being in love with a marble statue."
"I don't know why I write all this, but how impossible life is. I think it really is a most devilish arrangement. No peace except in utter renounciation. And must one struggle through a peppery sequence of years just to know this?"
"Baroness Ixkull is going to give me perfectly new sisters to train and I am going to make them march like pokers, copy every record each time they make a spot and count all the linen every two weeks. As they will not have been in any other ward, they cannot make any comparisons or complain."
"I know, Poodie, that you would like some things here very much—the simplicity of everything and the independence of people. I think it is only possible with a recognized aristocracy when people do not have to explain themselves and are established. I have met a few such nice people, of course to hardly know them, but one feels one knows them at once because there is a recognition of being of one world and one knows beforehand that one shares the same feelings towards most things. For instance, they may not know me personally but the fact that Papa was in the service, was Gentillomme de la Chambre (Court title), was educated at the Lycee, defines a type, defines in a certain manner his daughter, if only externally. Then knowing that Mama was American, the whole thing is clear in a natural way. My wanting to be here is understood—my attachment to America is understood."